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Ala. to seek Supreme Court review of water feud

ATLANTA — Alabama’s governor said Monday that the state will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a dispute over Georgia’s ability to use water from a reservoir that’s the main water source for roughly 3 million people in metro Atlanta.

Gov. Robert Bentley’s decision came after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected a request for a new hearing from Georgia’s neighbors, Alabama and Florida. Those states had wanted the full appeals court to reconsider a three-judge panel’s finding that Atlanta had a legal right to take water from Lake Lanier, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Chattahoochee River northeast of the city.

Lawyers first learned of the appeals court’s decision Monday, three days after it was made.

Alabama and Florida have argued that Congress never gave Georgia permission to use the federal reservoir as a water source and that Atlanta’s consumption harms communities and wildlife downstream on the Chattahoochee, Flint and Apalachicola rivers.

“Allowing Atlanta to tap water from Lake Lanier significantly limits the flow of water downstream to Alabama,” Bentley said in a written statement. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will grant review of this case.”

Attorneys at Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection were still reviewing their legal options Monday and would not comment, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Diaz said.

“We all know where we stand now from a legal perspective, and the governor feels confident the three states can come to an agreement that mutually benefits them all,” Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said in a statement.

The long-running feud over water hit a crescendo in 2009 when U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson sided with Florida and Alabama. He ruled that metro Atlanta had little legal authority to draw water from Lake Lanier. He set a July 2012 deadline for the political leaders of all three states to reach a deal resolving their dispute over water rights.

If they failed, Magnuson said he would restrict water withdrawals from Lake Lanier to levels last seen in the 1970s, when metro Atlanta was a fraction of its current size.

This summer’s ruling from the three-judge appeals panel significantly strengthened Georgia’s hand at the bargaining table. It tossed aside Magnuson’s deadline, saying that Congress always intended that water supply was a permissible use of Lake Lanier. The judges gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam, one year to re-evaluate a request from Georgia seeking access to more water.

While the ruling instructed the corps that water supply is a permissible use of the reservoir, Army officials must still weigh the needs of downstream users and wildlife when making their decision.